The Destruction of the Nations, Part 3
Selected Scriptures
We come tonight to the study of the destruction of the nations, part 3, in our study of prophecy for this particular theme. And the particular subject in the destruction of the nations that we want to zero in on is the subject, the final forms of false religion.
We are discussing a period of time known as the Tribulation. The Bible tells us that the church is going to be taken out of the world at the end of the age and we believe that to be very soon. And then once the church is taken out of the world, there's going to begin a terrible, fearful time known as the Tribulation. We have discussed, concerning the Tribulation, some of the things that are going to be happening. We have discussed, particularly, Israel's place during that Tribulation time. And we are now discussing the place of the nations during that same seven-year period known as the Tribulation.
Now, there are many aspects of the nations in that particular Tribulation period. One of them is the religion of the Tribulation. What kind of religion will exist among the nations in the Tribulation? That is what we want to talk about tonight, the final forms of false religion that are going to exist in the Tribulation. Now, obviously, the church, having gone out, all true religion has left. God, then, will begin to redeem some from Israel and the great multitude from the Gentiles, but aside from that true work that is going on, there will rise a great worldwide false religious system, Satan's final great phase of false religion. And we want to see what that is, what's going to happen to it and if there are any signs right now that we can look at that indicate that this is fast coming.
By way of introduction, let me just begin at the beginning. When God (laughter)...when God created men at the very start, He created them with an anticipation and an anxiety toward deity. Men were created for fellowship with God. And so there is innate in every man from the very start, a desire to know and be known by the supernatural. Along came the fall of man as recorded in the book of Genesis. And since the fall, man's nature has been dominated by sin and perverted. But even in the perversion of man's nature, there is still a religious bent. There is still a desire to know the supernatural. There is still the haunting thought that there must be somewhere a God. Witness, for example, the myriad of religions around the world. You say, well, I don't know about that because I know a man who's not religious, who's atheistic. Well, that doesn't disprove the law any more than a blind man disproves the general statement that men see. There may be an exception to that. There may be someone who has reasoned himself logically out of the possibility of God. But perhaps he's not really honest, like the atheist who got himself in a terrible situation and said, if there isn't a God, there ought to be one for times like this and began to pray (laughter). But legitimately, men have a religious bent. They create religions to accommodate this bent. And since the beginning, since God made man, He made him with a religious nature, a capacity to step outside of himself and find spiritual fulfillment within the framework of the supernatural world. Men, then, continue to be religious. And Romans, chapter 1 says that even though they reject the truth, they then manufacture their own religions. And, really, they all boil down to the worship of Satan, demons and self. They worship the creature more than the Creator. When they rejected the true God, they began to worship four-footed things and birds and snakes and everything else, Romans 1 says. Man will always turn to religion because he has a drive built in him from the creation to know the supernatural. Now, friends, Satan knows this. And Satan knows that this supernatural bent is so powerful that it can actually dominate the patterns of a man's life. And so Satan is very busy all the time creating false systems of religion. Man is already bent that way; Satan simply accommodates the bent. And Satan comes along as an angel of light, manufactures all the false systems and men dive right in. When the fall occurred, immediately after the fall, God set about to redeem man, didn't He. He said in Genesis 3:15 that there's coming the seed of a woman who will bruise the serpent's head. And He went right into a redemptive process immediately even to the point of sacrifice. And immediately, Satan began a counter campaign. God began a move to propagate the world with His truth, and Satan began a move to propagate the world with error. In fact, in II Corinthians 4:4 [this is 4:3,4] it says that "if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost in whom the god of this world has"...what?..."blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel...should shine unto them." Satan, then, has moved in to blind man to truth and has filled him up with error. Now, the reason there are religions around the world is because of man's bent toward religion and Satan's desire to capture him in false systems. And it's very, very successful.
Now, all of this began, if you take your Bibles, back in Genesis, chapter 11. All of this organized, systematic kind of religion began back here in Genesis 11. And it's a very interesting passage to consider because it has ramifications that go on clear till the end of man's day. Religion has become the enslaver of men. People get locked into religious systems, Satan does enough miracles to hold them captive, and, really, the whole, kind of, systematic, false religion thing began here on the plain of Shinar in Genesis 11. Verse 1: "The whole earth was of one language and one speech. It came to pass as they journeyed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there. They said one to another, 'Come, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly.' They had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar. And they said, 'Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto Heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" Now, you notice something very interesting here. They said in verse 3, "let us," in verse 4, "let us," in verse 4, again, "let us." Now, this was the desire of self-will to frame religion. And they were gonna build a tower. Now, it's very simplistic to say they were gonna try to build a tower to reach Heaven. If they were gonna do that, they never would have built it in the plain of Shinar; they would have built on top of a mountain and short-cutted it. They were not trying to build a tower that they could climb into Heaven on. They were building what is commonly known as a ziggurat. They were building a tower or a monument to their own religion. A ziggurat had on the top of it a zodiac. And the priests of this particular system hoped to gain the information they needed from the stars. This was the beginning of the zodiac. In fact, this right here was the beginning of all systematized false religion. They began actual devil worship. They began actual demon worship. Now, the man behind this whole mess was named Nimrod and he's mentioned in Genesis 10:9. And verse 8 says "Cush begat Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel..." Now, Nimrod was the brains and the motivation behind the whole formation of Babel. It was open defiant turning toward Satan and false religion and from the true religion and the true God. In fact, Nimrod's name means "rebel." He was well named. And, incidentally, he is really a very vivid foreshadowing of the Antichrist. His name means "rebel." Antichrist's name, according to Paul, is "the lawless one." And his particular approach, it says in verse 9, "he was a mighty hunter before the Lord." And that's a little bit misleading. What it literally means is "presumptuous in the presence of God." He set himself against God...again, a picture of Antichrist who does the same thing according to Daniel 11:36,37. And like Antichrist, Nimrod was mighty. You read II Thessalonians, you'll find so was Antichrist, who was able to do signs and wonders. Nimrod, as the Antichrist will be, was also a king. And notice this; Nimrod began his headquarters in Babel. The Antichrist will manufacture a system that the New Testament calls "Babylon." And so you have a full cycle in the history of man. False religion will begin at Babel. It will wrap up in a concept the New Testament calls Babylon.
Now, Nimrod was Satan's man to set up the first system of idolatrous religion. They built their own tower. They invented their own system. God didn't allow it to last. Indicated in verse 5, "the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. The Lord said, 'Behold, the people are one, they have all one language and this they begin to do, and now nothing will be withheld from them which they have imagined to do.'" They're in unison. "'Come, let us go down,'"...interesting, there's communication within the Trinity..."'Come, let us go down and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.' So, the Lord scattered them abroad from there upon the face of all the earth and they ceased building the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel..." which originally meant "Gate of God," and then became synonymous with "confusion." When we think of Babel, we think of confusion. "Now, there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth and there did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of the earth." Now, watch. Here was the real beginning of false systems of religion and everybody was one. The whole world, in a sense, was gathered there. When God scattered them all over the place, they took what was left in their minds of this religion and they formulated it culturally wherever they happened to go and in whatever language they happened to speak. This is fantastically important because all the major religions that you find throughout the world have basically the very same ingredients. Why?...because they all came originally from Babel to begin with. And when God scattered them, they all took on cultural aspects according to the language of the people and the place in which they lived and, of course, that was changed through a period of years. The scattering, then, gave rise to world religions, but all of them go back to Babel. They all will again be reunited in the Babylon of the Tribulation, which is the name of the false religious system. And notice something very interesting. Here at Babel they all spoke the same language. And you know what I think is an interesting thing is that the whole big ecumenical church movement that's coming together to become the Babylon of the Tribulation seems to be finding the greatest catalyst for their unity to be the gift of tongues, which is almost as if we were reversing the disorder of languages and amalgamating people on the basis of that particular kind of ecstatic language. Interesting. There may be an effort on Satan to form another Babel, as it were, bring the thing full cycle. I think we'll get into that in just a minute and make it more clear to you. All false religions, then, stem from Babel, and really, they were all worship of demons. In Deuteronomy there are several passages of note, but one that I would read to you is Deuteronomy 32:17. Speaking here of typical false religion, the Word says: "They sacrificed unto demons, not to God; to gods whom they knew not; to new gods who came up newly, whom your fathers feared not." False religion is a sacrifice to demons...sacrifice to gods that rise out of Hell as it were. In Psalms 106, again another indication of a similar nature...106, verse 37, I think it is...yes. In describing here, false worship, he says "they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons." Now, Satan inspired Babel, and the residue of Babel became the core of all the false religions when Babel was scattered. So, whether you're talking about the Babylonian god Marduk or the Assyrian god Ashur or the Greek god Zeus or the Roman god Jupiter or Apollo or whether you're talking about a nature god like Ra, the Egyptian sun god, it was all the same format and it all stemmed from the same satanic source at Babel. And, really, it's all satanic today, whether you talk about paganism or something as sophisticated as Hinduism or something as American as cults; it's all satanic.
Now, satanic religion, then, has been around a long time, but it's getting worse. And that's Biblical, that is Biblical. Paul said to the Thessalonians, "the mystery of iniquity is already at work." There is going to be an unfolding of worse and worse things. Paul said to Timothy, evil men shall grow worse and worse. False religion is moving toward an apex. And Paul says in I Timothy, for example, 4:1, that there's going to be a particular emphasis at the latter times. "Some shall depart from the faith in the latter times, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils." And he goes on to describe something of it. In II Timothy, chapter 2, verse 16, "But shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as a gangrene." And you can look in II Peter, chapter 2 and find the same thing. "As there were false prophets, so shall there be, bringing in destructive heresies, denying the Lord," etc., etc. Then in chapter 3, he says essentially the same thing, "in the last days, scoffers, walking after their own lusts..." and teaching error. Now, the Bible then says, now, mark this in your mind, that there's gonna be a worsening of religion...that it is going to grow and grow and grow into a kind of system that is totally satanic. We wonder whether some things could ever get worse, whether satanic worship at this point now isn't as bad as it could be.
Now, as we look at this particular subject in reference to the Tribulation, I want to just pinpoint one subject, one topic tonight and that is the religion of the nations in the Tribulation. What is this system gonna be like? We've talked about the times of the nations. We've talked about the rulers of the nations or the ruler of the nations - Antichrist. Now, I want to talk for a moment about the religion of the nations. Turn in your Bible to Revelation 17. And we're gonna be there awhile, so you can relax (laughter). Incidentally, we're gonna consider some more things about the nations in the Tribulation in weeks to come: the alignment of the nations, the kings of the east, the north, the south and all that and that's fascinating. Have you been reading the paper today about Egyptians and Arabs allying against Israel and then the news came on today that Russia has sided with Egypt. What did we expect? Daniel 11 predicted it. So we'll be talking about the alignment of the nations, the collapse of the nations, the war of the nations, the judgment of the nations.
Now, Revelation 17 is a fascinating chapter. It predicts the doom of this worldwide system of religion. This is a preview, if you will, of the religion of the Tribulation. Now, let me begin by saying something that I think I need to say as a kind of a check-off point. What I'm going to say tonight is in no way meant to be unkind to any individual. I think you know me better than that. I don't make issues over individuals. But I do believe Satan operates in systems and I may make comments about certain systems and that does not mean that I don't believe that there are wonderful people in those systems, some of them trapped and caught in ignorance. And it does not mean that I don't believe that God is, perhaps, working in the lives of many of those people. But nevertheless, the system itself needs to be brought to the test of the light of Scripture.
To begin with, then, we come to chapter 17 and we're introduced to a system of religion. It comes under an interesting title. Verse 5: It is called "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth." Now whatever this system is in Revelation 17, it has an interesting name. It's called Mystery, Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, or the Mother of whores or prostitutes, and Abominations of the Earth. That's a pretty strong name. You say, well, what is this? What is the true church called? What is the true church called?... the Bride. What would the false church then be?...the prostitute. Why is it called Babylon? Where did all false religion begin?...Babel. And when all false religion then comes together and accumulates into one final system, it is gonna draw, then, the very same name that it had at its very beginning because that's what it is. You see, at Babel, it was scattered. In the Tribulation it all comes back together again in a final system. It's called, then, Mystery, Babylon because it's Babel gone full cycle. And it's called the Mother of Harlots, or the Harlot or the Prostitute because it is the false church. The true church, the Bride, is already with Christ. Now, I believe that what we're seeing today needs to be taken into account. There is the building of the false church going on all over the world. All kinds of churches are getting together on everything but the truth of the Bible, right. All kinds of overtures from one religion to another religion and all kinds of activity together trying to accomplish some kind of a worldwide united church, a great, huge ecumenical church. This is really a part of what we see as the Babylon of the book of Revelation. You say, well, what are they uniting under? Well, it's interesting. They're not uniting under the Bible and Biblical doctrine are they? One thing that all these people are uniting under is social action, community involvement, civil rights, you know, education, welfare, housing, psychological services, women's lib, all those things. And some of those things are good things. But when the church has lost its identity and gotten lost in social action...you see, doctrine has long ago faded away and so there's an ease about getting together, and that's what's happening.
The second thing that churches are getting together on...and denominations and religions...is experience. And we're living in the existential day when it's almost shameful to be one who talks about a spiritual experience with definition. You would ask the average liberal theologian who doesn't really believe God wrote the Bible and doesn't really believe Jesus was God or virgin born or resurrected...he's a little shaky on it. You ask him, have you ever had a religious experience and he would say, oh, yes, I've had the leap of faith, or I've had my particular otherworldly experience. And you say to him, well, could you define that and he'll say, wait a minute; that's not fair. It's my experience. See. It's indefinable. And he doesn't even want to define it. It's his thing. That's existentialism. Now, you can have a whole lot of people having content-less experiences getting together, because they don't ever have to define their experience.
The third thing that I think is significant about what people are getting together on is emotion. And this is another dimension of experience. I keep reading, with very much interest, about the movement that we call today, the charismatic movement. And I believe that there are some wonderful people in that. There are some people that love the Lord Jesus Christ and we're gonna spend eternity with, and some people that I love dearly, personally. But I see within that movement, a getting together that crosses all the lines without any thought for doctrine or truth... bypassing those things. For example, new bridges are being built from the historic church to the Mormons because they also speak in tongues. New bridges are being built to the Roman Catholic Church and these are most interesting, most interesting. You say, well, are you against the Catholics? No, I'm not at all. I'm against the system because I think it's satanic. You say, what do you mean by that? Let me read you an interesting article. If you think the theology has changed in all these overtures...say, oh, isn't it great that more of the Catholic Church is getting involved in all of this. Let me just read you, basically, a doctrinal statement by a priest in June of 1973 setting down where the Catholic Church stands today. And this he wrote to an evangelical Christian. Quote, "It might interest you to know that I was brought up as a Baptist. I rejected that teaching as heretical, erroneous and hazardous to my mental, spiritual and emotional health. My prayer for all is that they might come at last through Christ's mercy into the ark of salvation, the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, of which I have the honor to be a priest through the orthodox and apostolic laying on of hands, by the Bishop in the historic Catholic succession. As a result, I have the power to absolve sins, to consecrate bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ and to pronounce God's blessing upon man." Then he closes by saying, "May the blessed Mother bring you to the truth." Now, the interesting thing about that is this, that that doctrine is erroneous. It is not Biblical. But we make all of these overtures to this. We say, oh, but they've had the experience. Don't you see how subtle that is? An unqualified experience doesn't mean anything. At Notre Dame there were some 11,000 Catholics recently at a charismatic clinic there...11,000! And a Benedictine monk from Notre Dame by the name of Father Edward O'Conner, reflecting on what's happening in the Catholic Church in regard to this Pentecostal movement said this...listen...quote "Catholics who have accepted Pentecostal spirituality have found it to be fully in harmony with their traditional faith and life." Listen. "Similarly, the traditions of the church have been taking on more meaning. Some people have been brought back to a frequent use of the sacrament of penance..." That's buying forgiveness..."through the baptism of the Spirit. Others have discovered a place for devotion to Mary in their lives. One of the most striking effects of the Holy Spirit's action has been to stir up devotion to the real presence in the Eucharist"...that is that Christ is actually in that piece of bread. Beloved, we know these to be false doctrines. How can we say that's the work of the Spirit? It cannot be the work of the Spirit; can it? No. Does the Spirit ever contradict the Word of God? No. Do we really believe that's the Spirit's work? What we're seeing today is the building of a great massive coalition of all of these systems, and on the basis of social action, undefined religious experience and an ecstatic emotional experience, they're crossing all the lines. It's amazing to me that the false church has so much...in just the last 50 years, it has so much more possibility of existing. Let me give you an interesting statistic. Glock and Stark ran a survey in 1970 and the question they asked of all the major denominations in America was this: Are the Scriptures, the Bible, the inspired and inerrant Word of God? That's an important question. Are the Scriptures the inspired and inerrant Word of God? Here's the answer. Seventy-seven percent of the American Lutherans said no. Sixty-seven percent of the American Baptists said no. Eighty-seven percent of the Methodists said no. Eighty-eight percent of the Presbyterians said no. And ninety-five percent of the Episcopalians said no. Now, if all of those people have agreed that this is not the Word of God, then what is? And if this isn't the Word of God, then there are no rules to the game of religion; you might as well get together on social action; right? And you might as well have an experience and get together on that basis. It's a fearful thing.
You say, well, how far does all this go, John? Well, it's building toward this church that is called Mystery, Babylon, the false church. Look at verse 5 again. "Upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS, AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." This is the final form of false religion. It's interesting that in the time that John lived when he penned this and had this vision, prostitutes were branded on their heads with certain figures in order that everyone might know that they were prostitutes. And you'll notice on the forehead is the name. You say, well, John, do you think this is the Catholic Church? Do you think the Catholic Church is going...there are some who think that is going to be the great apostate church. There are some reasons that people think that. Verse 4, for example. The woman is...and the woman here is a figure of this system...the woman is arrayed in purple, scarlet, with gold, precious stones and pearls, has a golden cup and some say that's all the display of the Roman Catholic Church. Verse 6: "I saw a woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs..." Some say that's The Inquisition, the persecution, how the Catholic Church is persecuted and so forth. Sir Robert Anderson of Scotland Yard once assumed that there must have been 50 million people die at the hands of persecution under the Roman system. Verse 9: "And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits." And everybody knows that Rome is the city with seven hills. And so some of them say this has to be Rome. It even says in verse 18 that it's a "great city that reigns over the kings of the earth." And this could indicate the power of Rome.
Well, let me say that I don't think this is just the Roman Catholic Church. If this is truly Babylon, then what must it include?...everything. I think it's a coming together of the whole world system of religion...all that's false. I think it's too narrow just to be the Roman Catholic Church. I think the term "Babylon" is too broad a term to refer just to Catholicism. And not only that, but in the book of Revelation, I don't expect just to focus on one religion, but to see the culmination of all; right? So, I think this. I think it is talking about a worldwide religious system, but I believe it'll be centered in Rome. I believe it'll be centered in Rome.
Now, I want to show you three things in this chapter. That's the introduction. I'll show you three things: a final union with Satan, a final deception of the world, and a final victory for the Lamb. A final union with Satan, a final deception of the world and a final victory for the Lamb. First of all, a final union with Satan. Look at verse 1 and let's go.
"There came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls..." I always hate to jump in in the middle in the book of Revelation because everybody's out in left field somewhere (laughter). You say, what angels with what bowls? (Laughter) Yeah, right. (Laughter) In chapter 16, and we won't go back any further...promise. In chapter 16, you have the pouring out of bowls as if wrath was being poured out. And during the Tribulation there's gonna be great judgment. And it's as if angels poured out bowls of judgment, dumping out vials on the earth or bowls. Well, one of these angels, who was one of the ones who was used to pour the bowls out in the Tribulation appears. And he talks with John..."talked with me, saying..." come here. Come over here, John, I want to show you something. I want to "show you the judgment of the great harlot that sits on many waters." Now, remember that in Revelation you have figurative language. Now, the great harlot is the false religious system. We have that; right? John says, I'm gonna show you the system and it sits on many waters. You say, well, what are the many waters? Well, verse 15 tells you this. It explains what they are. Verse 15 says, "The waters which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues." Now, notice, whatever this system is, it is a worldwide system; right? It sits on the whole system of tongues and peoples and nations and everything. It encompasses the world. So it is the false church that encompasses the world. It's a massive system that Satan has brought together in one big ecumenical hash. Verse 2: "With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication..." Now, remember the symbolism is, the system is like a woman and the kings of the earth have been involved with this woman. "...and the inhabitants of the earth have been drunk with the wine of her fornication." What is that saying? It's saying, whatever this religious system is, it's in connection with the world political system. It's the church and state together. It's interesting that if you study the history of the Roman Catholic Church, you find that continually was a mingling...that the Roman Catholic Church, the papacy itself even was a political football for centuries and centuries and centuries. The church and state were very often wed. And the guy who first started it all was Constantine. But nevertheless, this particular system is going to be a worldwide system of religion, but all the kings of the earth are gonna get involved in it.&nb